“The impact of Millennium Park and its gleaming, otherworldly outdoor concert hall, Pritzker Pavilion, on the area’s summer classical music scene cannot be overstated, “ writes John von Rhein in Thursday’s (7/10) Chicago Tribune (subscription required). “Both have become Chicago icons within the 10 years they have served as the state-of-the-art home of the Grant Park Music Festival, among other hot-weather musical attractions. Both have proved themselves to be real game-changers, transforming the nation’s only remaining free, municipally funded outdoor summer classical music series.… Before the Grant Park Orchestra packed up its instruments and moved to its handsome Frank Gehry-designed digs one block north of its former home, the Petrillo Music Shell, in 2004, it was known as a good, hardworking ensemble and not much more. A huge problem was that the makeshift shelters that have housed the ensemble since its inception during the Great Depression did not allow the orchestra members to hear one another properly.… It was not until the orchestra set up shop under the stainless-steel sails of Pritzker Pavilion and launched its remarkable artistic evolution under Carlos Kalmar—its Uruguay-born Austrian principal conductor since 2000 and artistic director since 2011—that concertgoers could actually appreciate the ensemble’s true quality.”
Posted July 14, 2014
